


if it's from you

by biblionerd07



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Birthday Presents, Fluff, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-Captain America: The First Avenger, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-06
Updated: 2016-01-06
Packaged: 2018-05-12 03:38:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5651155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biblionerd07/pseuds/biblionerd07
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve gets two opportunities to give Bucky a first-ever birthday present, and he ruins it both times. (Bucky doesn't agree.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	if it's from you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Brenda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brenda/gifts).



> Happy happy birthday! You deserve every good thing!

When Steve meets Bucky for the first time, it’s January 5; he remembers because it’s the day after his birthday-day-in-the-wrong-month. To an eleven-year-old, things like that stand out. It’s snowing and Steve is lying flat on his back because he slipped on some ice—one of the few times he isn’t on the ground from being thrown there.

Bucky gives him a hand up, and Steve doesn’t really remember the rest. He doesn’t remember how they go from new acquaintances to best friends. He doesn’t remember when he next sees Bucky. He doesn’t remember who came to whose house first.

All he remembers next is Bucky eagerly counting down to his eleventh birthday, glaring whenever Steve crows about being older. January turns into February, which skips along into March, and Steve suddenly has only three days before Bucky’s birthday.

He panics. At that point, three months have gone by, and at their age three months spending every day together is practically eternity. He barely remembers his life before Bucky was in it. How on earth is he supposed to get an adequate present for that, and especially in just three days? It's the first birthday he'll be able to get Bucky a present, and the present should be perfect.

“Why don’t you draw him something?” His mother suggests absently, frowning over a pair of Steve’s tattered socks she’s trying to mend. “I don’t know what you _do_ to them,” she mutters, and Steve thinks guiltily of running down Bucky’s apartment stairs without shoes on to catch an escaped marble that rolled out the door almost like it did it on purpose.

“Ma, I can’t just draw him something!” Steve whines. “He sees my drawings every day. That ain’t special.”

“Well, you’re his friend,” she reminds him. “You know what he likes.”

“I’m his _best_ friend,” Steve corrects. He’s a little sullen because he’s realizing, suddenly, that he _doesn’t_ really know what Bucky likes. Bucky likes marbles and baseball and comic books and aliens. He hates broccoli and church and being forced to wear a sweater. But none of that is knowledge Steve can use; Bucky already has tons of marbles because he wins them at school, Steve can’t do anything baseball-related except maybe give back the cards Bucky gave _him_ , comic books are too easy, and aliens are impossible.

It leaves him with nothing.

He stomps around in a foul mood for the next two and a half days, feeling like the worst best friend in the world. What kind of best friend doesn’t know what present to buy for their best friend’s birthday? An awful one, that’s what, especially when it's the first-ever birthday present. That should really mean something.

In the end, Steve hastily scribbles out a comic book with Bucky as the hero, battling aliens and playing baseball, and he burns with shame as he walks to Bucky’s house. It’s a ridiculous present, and he didn’t put half as much time into it as Bucky deserves. He wishes he had money. He’d buy Bucky a whole cake just for himself, and then he’d buy him ice cream and an icebox to put it in. Maybe they’d take a trip somewhere, no mothers there to make them wear coats and scarves and no little sisters to cry and demand attention.

“Happy birthday,” he says miserably when Bucky opens the door. Steve thrusts the comic book—wrapped in newspaper—at Bucky’s chest, ears heating up. “Sorry,” he adds. “It’s dumb.”

Bucky doesn’t even give him a response, just rips it open right there with the door still open and everything. He hasn’t even made Steve come inside and sit next to the oven for a while to warm up the way he usually does.

“Wow!” Bucky exclaims. “Lookit, that’s me!”

“I don’t need to _look_ —I drew it,” Steve says testily. “Don’t pretend to like it.”

Bucky looks confused. “I _do_ like it.”

“No, you don’t.”

Bucky starts laughing at him. “What, I shouldn’t like my present because you don’t?”

Steve scowls. “You shouldn’t like it because it’s not good enough.”

Bucky smiles at him, that smile that makes his stomach hurt sometimes for no reason. “Stevie, pal,” he says, throwing his arm around Steve’s neck. “If it’s from you, it’s good enough.”

  
When Bucky comes back to Steve, stops running and comes and finds him, it’s March 18. Steve remembers because it’s the day Bucky comes back. He doesn’t need any other help. It’s only two days before Bucky’s birthday, but Steve’s not sure if Bucky will want to celebrate. He’s not sure Bucky’s _up_ for celebrating; he sleeps for an entire eighteen hours when he finally agrees to lie down, and Steve keeps pressing his ear to the door to hear if Bucky’s still breathing.

So Bucky’s birthday comes around, and it’s actually a pretty nice spring day, and Steve paces around the kitchen, wondering what he’s supposed to do. It's Bucky's first birthday back. It seems like a pretty big deal. Steve’s making waffles, because Bucky likes waffles, or Bucky _liked_ waffles, once upon a time, and Steve doesn’t know what else to do.

He feels silly about it, but he has a present for Bucky. It’s something he picked up before Bucky came back, some kind of hope or faith or something driving him to make sure he had a gift. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but now Steve’s not so sure. He’s not sure Bucky will appreciate it. It’s a calendar, which is probably a strange present for March, but he’d gone through and marked in important dates—all Bucky’s sisters’ birthdays, his parents’ wedding anniversary, the day and year he got his first kiss; silly things.

Bucky finally comes out of Steve’s room, moving a little cautiously in a way that makes Steve’s heart ache because they never used to be cautious with each other. But he’s wearing a thick sweater of Steve’s, and it makes Steve simultaneously happy, in maybe a perverse way, to see Bucky in his clothes and also sad, because the old Bucky didn’t like sweaters, especially not indoors. The old Bucky never sat still, so he overheated easily, and wearing a sweater just made him more flushed.

This isn’t the old Bucky, though. And Steve’s more than okay with that. As long as he gets any Bucky, here and safe and not being used by anyone for anything.

“Morning,” Steve says.

“Morning,” Bucky mumbles back.

“Happy birthday,” Steve adds hesitantly. Bucky’s forehead wrinkles for a second, and then it smoothes out and a ghost of a smile flutters around his lips.

“My birthday, huh?” He asks. Steve’s heart leaps. Three words—not the three words he’s dying to hear from Bucky, sure, but three words—in a teasing tone and he’s grinning like a fool.

“Yeah, your birthday. Comes every year, you know.”

He wants to pull the words back. It has not been coming every year, not for Bucky, not for the last seventy years. Bucky arches an eyebrow but doesn’t say anything. Steve licks his lips nervously.

“I, um, I’m making waffles,” he says.

“I can see that,” Bucky says. There are at least ten waffles stacked on a plate already, and Steve’s not done. “But what are _you_ gonna eat?”

It takes a second, but Steve realizes he’s joking and tips his head back and laughs, a bit harder than the joke really warrants, but he figures it’s understandable. Just hearing Bucky joke at all warms him.

“What’s this?” Bucky asks, poking at the present Steve wrapped—still newspaper, because he sees no reason to waste it—earlier that morning.

“Oh,” Steve says, feeling his cheeks going red. “That’s—don’t worry about it.”

“Is this a present for me?” Bucky asks.

“No,” Steve says. He can’t give it to Bucky. It’s too dumb.

“But Steve.” Bucky makes his eyes big. “I didn’t get any presents for seventy years.”

Steve doesn’t take as long to catch the joke this time, and he huffs and rolls his eyes. “It’s not…” He shrugs.

“It’s not what?” Bucky presses.

Steve bites his lip, focusing on the waffles for a moment, and then finally says, “It’s not good enough.” Nothing is, nothing could be. Maybe a time machine to erase every bad thing that’s ever happened to Bucky, including asking Mary Gatson to the high school prom when she already had a boyfriend.

Bucky just looks at him for a minute, and then he reaches out and puts his hand on Steve’s cheek. Steve closes his eyes almost without meaning to, leaning into Bucky’s touch the way he hasn’t gotten to do in too many decades.

“Stevie, pal,” Bucky murmurs, and Steve’s heart starts to thud almost painfully, like it did before the serum at random intervals. “If it’s from you, it’s good enough.”

Steve can’t talk, can’t even hardly breathe, and he presses his lips together tightly, shaking his head a little. Not arguing, necessarily, but not sure what else he can do.

“If you’re really worried about it,” Bucky says. “I got an idea of what would make it good enough.”

“What?” Steve asks. This is different; he doesn’t know this part. Bucky leans in and kisses him softly, and now Steve _really_ isn’t breathing, never will again, probably. He feels like his entire body is tingling. Bucky’s eyes are still open and very, very blue so close to his.

“There,” Bucky whispers. “Now it’s perfect.”

And Steve can’t argue with that.


End file.
